Mr. Pratt:
. . . Rocks in the the desert are organic.  The climbs in the four corners have a quality of aliveness not usually associated with the inanimate world, and for me that quality is becoming a source of increasing attraction.  (View from Deadhorse Point)
 
     Ever been to Joshua Tree?  Though not the four corners, JT is a southwest type desert environment.  JT is part of the Mojave Desert and the four corners is in the Basin and Range province, sometimes referred as the Navajoan Desert.  No matter. JT is a good intro into various cutlurs of the southwest and tierra sin aqua.  But whereas JT is too often now a days crowded, the four corners, borrowing a phrase from the Dixie Chicks, is "wide open spaces."
 
     Mr. Abbey:
A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us — like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness — that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours.
 
     In all my ramblings out there in the four corners, I can proudly say I have never done any ascents.  On the other foot, David Roberts, early serious climber in Alaska and good on stone, and writer of In Search of the Old Ones, a book about the Anasazi, says of his travails up "The Ancient Ones" hand and foot stone ladders, he had to put on his climbing boots and pay very close attention to get up.  The Anasazi did such tasks barefoot or in Yucca fiber sandals, in all weather.

     Joshua Tree has always been my favorite place to go cragging (Illusion Dweller is one of the best 5.10 thin cracks on our planet), but more importantly to explore.  In college I studies biogeography and botany.  There are a lot of similarities in desert and alpine flowers due to the xeric nature of the climate and short growing season (many biennials, takes two seasons for plants to produce seeds, an environmental adaptation).  Never in JT or the four corners did I bring my taxonomy books or hand lens.  The ecology I wanted was deeper still, more of a human nature wild nature ecotone.  There is much more to the southwest than rock climbing.  And you don't tale sandstone for granite.  As a sidebar, one summer with my ex wife and two youngins' we toured Canyon de Chelly.  Lauryn, in her four year old bundle of enthusiastic wisdom said, "I'd like to live in that Anahoozi white house." (Anasazi White House stone ruins tucked up on a ledge under a south facing overhang)
 
     Tony, Terrence and I ventured into the Monument Valley outback looking for the Totem Pole, a three hundred foot tall tower made famous in the Clint Eastwood movie the Eiger Sanction.  When we found this sacred totem, we split up and just walked among the in sagebrush. We had the knack.  We were  wondering as we were wandering.  We knew we were on holy ground.